I am new to the
Ubuntu Forums and relatively new to
Ubuntu. I've been monkeying around with
Linux systems for about ten years now and I'm still clueless; well, at least, I still
feel clueless when it comes to
Linux. I'm a former Windows Application ISV as well as being a
Windows user going all the way back to
Windows 3.11 and various incarnations of
DOS. I am all too aware of the fact that in
Linux, unlike
Windows, I am still very much a point-and-click user.
.
What brings me here are the results of my latest review of my
Linux normal viability tests; courtesy of
Ubuntu. I know some people think
Ubuntu is a bit bloated and, maybe, a bit slow. However, compared to what I'm used to putting up with,
Ubuntu is very fast - in fact I just about fell out of my tree when it first booted. I'd restarted the computer and just reached the office door, thinking to make myself an espresso, when the login came up. And, so, I returned to my desk, logged in and only had time to stand up and turn around before it had finished loading the desktop. So much for the timeliness of that espresso-delivered lignin vanilin hit!
.
I like the fact that, in
Ubuntu, I'm not waiting for applications to make up their mind before making an appearance when required. I'm also impressed by the shutdown time - which is important because in electrical storms, depending on the proximity and frequency of the first few lightning strikes, I give the OS between 0 and 90 seconds, to shut down, before I pull the plug out of the wall - ready or not.
Vista and
XP sometimes take more than 120 seconds. But, what can I say? There is simply no coming back from a barbequed hard disc! In terms of themes, I like the coffee bean references I see here (which remind me to have my espresso before I post) and the Xhosa definition of ubuntu as humanity in its secondary sense (OED3, 2010) also appeals because this ubuntu (which is also added to the English language by OED3, 2010) seems to be one of the most important and yet most overlooked mechanisms of successful and enduring social social interaction - yet it seems to be fast disappearing in some circles.
.
Some of my pet peeves include the lack of a virus scanner because I prefer to scan for viruses in one operating system (with the disk hot-plugged as slave) from a completely different and clean operating system on a separate disk (as master). For example, on the system I recently migrated to
Ubuntu, I used to hot-plug hard drives with
Windows systems installed to scan for viruses while those systems were shut down. You'd be surprised how many high risk systems yielded up viruses to this method when live system scans would reveal nothing. It would seem that scanning a live system for viruses is never going to turn anything up if the system has already been rooted because rooted systems won't report truthfully to the API, much less to anything else. And another pet peeve is that, although I find the default desktop GUI to present an interesting innovation, it may have some difficulties when it comes to offering direct access to multiple instances of the same program from a maximized window.
.
Anyway, one of the big issues for
Linux (at least in the past) has been the ability to run software suites sufficient for mainstream business and communications which could handle all the same file formats as the more expensive competitor. This now seems to be fully resolved with *.docx handling coming out before I was troubled by this new spin on the old *.doc file. I've noticed that the
OpenOffice word processor, for example, does plenty of things which the more expensive competitor simply can't do and
OpenOffice lacks the idioting-down-justified feature-culling which is so characteristic of the more expensive competitor. I would point out that "dumbing-down", as it is often called, has nothing to do with making applications easier to use and is, in reality, is all about cutting the cost of development by slashing the specification - at the consumer's expense. In any case, not only does
OpenOffice seem to moving forward in the features department (as opposed to backpedaling for the sake of cost-cutting), but it also seems to get the file-writing right every time - and my testing has shown that lack of adherence to standards (which bears strongly on file-writing) is one of the biggest sources of risk to compatibility which is inherent in the more expensive competing product.
.
Thunderbird, which I run on
Ubuntu, almost knocked me out of my tree when, while I was fumbling for my ISP proxy, simply bypassed my ISP altogether and hooked directly into my domain's email server. This application also has a foolproof system for account-based sorting of email so, again,
Linux and the
Linux application suite seem to be coming out ahead.
.
The only thing I had any trouble with was
Wine - but it is possibly still a big ask to be trying to run
Windows dedicated graphically accelerated games (e.g.
Skyrim,
Fallout: New Vegas,
Oblivion, etc.) and plug-in development tools (e.g.
Creation Kit,
GECK:NV,
Construction Set) just yet - especially running a
nVidea video card which, I've heard, doesn't exactly have the easiest drivers to integrate with. In any case, it has been done successfully before (e.g.
Running Wine on Ubuntu ,
Linux / Wine ) which is good news because it indicates that the problem is most likely with my setup and not necessarily a
Wine or
Ubuntu bug.
.
Based on the results of my testing, I would have been looking at a full migration by sometime next year, but my instance of
Windows Vista Ultimate is showing that first telltale lag which comes up a several years before
Windows-version EOL (but marks six months to effective EOL) and the chatter I've seen, concerning
Windows 8 and a certain infamy for inherent restrictions on trade (Sherman Act, anyone?), has forced my hand early (although it did seem to follow the logical progression which I have been observing in
Microsoft's architecture ever since
.NET ditched the compiler in favour of the interpreter). So I'm currently looking down the barrel of a front-line migration to
Linux by the end of the quarter and the rest of the systems by the end of the financial year.
.
By way of warning: Expect a stampede of ex-Windows refugees like myself. Usually, by the time I get around to a systems upgrade, large numbers of primates have already done the deed. And when
Linux takes the primary market share, as I expect it soon will,
Linux will become the centre of attention in malware/virus/phishing circles - so I would suggest some extra preparation for all this implies. E.g. Firefox & Opera still lack the option to bar all active or client-side content except that served by domains which are white-listed by the user in the browser. Sometimes, it's better to employ both belt
and braces because, although only one may be necessary under normal circumstances, both are advisable for extraordinary circumstances and a looming mass exodus to
Linux sounds pretty extraordinary to me.
.
So here I am because I am certain that my lack of depth of experience with Linux is certain to raise a few questions I'll need some help with...
Ultimate Coffee Grinder
Originally Posted by Bucky Ball
Hi all and welcome to the forums.
but I seem to keep coming back to Ubuntu. Don't know why..could be the color ( I do kinda like that orange thang going on..) ease of use.. etc, etc..don't know why. I just enjoy it.
Adv Reply
Bookmarks